Re: What's a good isolating language to look at

Jim Henry wrote:
>I checked the gjâ-zym-byn version of the Babel text
>(not on my web site yet; I finished the second draft
>translation awhile ago, but got busy with other things
>before I had time to do an interlinear gloss).  It has 208 words
>and 359 morphemes*, so an index of synthesis of 1.726.
>Like many engelangs** it's purely agglutinative; I don't have to
>count to see that the agglutinativity index is 1.0.
 ...
>[**] - Or all engelangs?  Ithkuil may be partly
>fusional, but I haven't studied it in over a year
>so I may be misremembering.  I can't
>think of any others that aren't agglutinating
>or isolating.
>=========================================================================
Ithkuil morpho-phonology is high fusional. I have a question, though. Do you
count zero-marked (i.e., unmarked) morphemes in a word when measuring the
synthetis/agglutinativity index of a language?  For example, Ithkuil verbs
mandatorily inflect for 17 morphological categories, however, any given
actual verb form is likely to have up to a dozen or more of these 17
categories manifested as morphologically unmarked "default" values,
analogous to the German nominative case being zero-marked.  Do such
zero-marked default morpheme-values get included when counting morphemes for
purposes of determining the synthesis/agglutinativity index?